


The Look of Love

by Iverna



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-25 18:31:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20376187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iverna/pseuds/Iverna
Summary: Prompt: a one shot where Emma gets hit with a love spell where she falls in love with the first person she sees, and she sees Hook and everyone is like “uh oh!” but Emma acts EXACTLY THE SAME AS BEFORE. (Season 3 canon or canon-adjacent.)





	1. Chapter 1

David is going to lose his mind.

It’s not that he wants to encourage Emma to get along with Hook. He can admit that the pirate isn’t as bad as he once thought, but he’s not about to throw his daughter at the man.

But he really wishes they’d stop arguing.

“I told you not to provoke them!” Emma hisses as they run into Regina’s office, the menacing shrieks of flying monkeys echoing behind them.

“I did not provoke them,” Hook retorts, slamming the door shut behind Snow.

“You literally told them to come at you!”

“They were already coming at me!”

“Still—”

“Shut up, both of you,” Regina snaps, pulling Hook away as he steps towards her desk. “And stay away from those potions.”

“What are they?” Snow asks, eyes sweeping over the array of bottles and boxes.

“Whatever I had,” Regina says. “I didn’t have time to sort through them yet—_that_ is a love potion, Emma, put it _down_ until you want to get the hots for the first person you see.”

Emma drops the bottle hurriedly back onto the desk. “Why did you bring a _love potion_?”

“Oh, _now_ falling in love with a monkey is no longer a good idea?” Hook drawls.

Emma glares at him. “Will you shut up about that?”

“Why? I thought it was the most wonderful time of your—”

“Hook!” she snaps.

“Swan!” he snaps back, mirroring her tone.

“Watch out!” Snow shouts, and the window to David’s left shatters.

His sword is still in his hand, and as the monkeys charge into the room, he’s ready. He and Hook cut through the first one, while Emma shoots a second. Regina’s fireball lances past the others, her curse mingling with the creatures’ shrieks.

Snow pulls Hook out of the way of a swiping claw, and David cuts it off, sending a third monkey up in a cloud of sparks.

Regina dispatches two, and Emma is bringing her gun to bear on the last one when it dives at her. She leaps out of the way, and David hears more glass shatter as she knocks into the desk.

“Emma!” he yells.

There’s a gun shot, and the monkey goes up in flames. Hook tosses his pistol aside, and hurries over to the desk. “Swan?”

“Oww,” Emma says, sounding disgruntled.

And David realises two things. One, the bottle with the love potion is shattered and empty, the contents splashed all over his daughters sleeve, and hand, and hair. And two, she’s about to lay eyes on the last person she should be looking at.

“Wait!” he yells. “Wait, don’t—”

But it’s too late. Emma turns and looks up at Hook, who’s holding out a hand to help her up.

“Thanks,” she says, and clambers to her feet, wincing. “Oh, that’s gonna leave a mark.”

“Hold still,” Hook says, and grabs hold of her arm when she doesn’t comply. “Hold _still_, damn it, you’ve got glass all over your sleeve.”

Emma looks down. “Oh. Damn.”

“Did any go through?” he asks.

“Don’t think so.” Carefully, Emma pulls her arm out of her jacket sleeve and lets the jacket fall to the ground. “What was that?”

“One of the bottles, I believe.” Hook turns to Regina. “Please tell me none of these are poison.”

“She said they’re potions, not poisons,” Emma says impatiently. “That’s different. Right?”

“I’m merely trying to rule out the worst,” he snaps, looking harassed. “Potions aren’t anything to trifle with either—”

“I wasn’t _trifling_, I didn’t exactly _mean_ to hit the thing!”

“Let’s just hope you aren’t about to sprout antlers or—”

“Sprout antlers? Seriously? _That’s_ where your mind went? You’re so—”

“You hit the love potion,” Regina breaks in, rolling her eyes. David’s heart sinks, even though he already knew it. “I _told_ you to be careful.”

“Yes, Swan, next time a monkey dives at you, do remember to be _careful_,” Hook says sarcastically, throwing a glare at Regina. “Will it work through the sleeve?”

“It works the minute you touch it,” Regina says. “Clothes or not. Sorry. But it shouldn’t last more than an hour or two.”

David looks over at Snow. She’s worrying her lower lip with her teeth as she watches Emma, concern all over her face. His stomach twists. Of all the potions—of all the _people_—

Emma wipes her potion-covered hand on her pants. “Must’ve been a dud,” she says with a shrug.

“A _dud_?” Regina repeats, incredulous and deeply offended. “_You’re_ the amateur around here, not me!”

“Are you okay?” Snow asks Emma, eyes narrowed.

“I’m fine.” Emma glares at Hook again. “And do _not_ start with the monkey thing again.”

“Upon my honour, I wasn’t going to,” Hook says, and David knows, he _knows_, that Hook knows it wasn’t a monkey Emma saw first after that bottle shattered. He’s looking at Emma like she’s got a fuse attached to her. “It’s too easy, and it’s getting old.”

“And you’re the authority on old, huh.” It’s Emma’s turn to smirk.

“_Experienced_, love, and yes I am.”

Emma just rolls her eyes at him.

Snow’s eyes remain narrowed. Regina is looking from Emma to Hook and back, expression slowly shifting from confused, to incredulous, to amused.

David watches Emma for the next hour, looking for signs of the potions effects, but there’s nothing. She and Hook keep bickering as they clean up and discuss their next move, she rolls her eyes at Regina’s pointed comments and smiles at her mother’s concern and even gives him a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

She’s treating them all like she always does, including Hook. The potion hasn’t changed anything at all.

“Are we _sure_ she’s okay?” he asks, as he and Snow follow the others along the street towards the town.

“She seems to know how to handle it,” Snow says quietly. “Which is good, because I’m pretty sure he’d be _insufferable_ if she... well.”

“You don’t think it’s some kind of... delayed reaction thing, right? Like, it didn’t get her, we’re good?”

Snow slides him a look that tells him he missed something. “No,” she says carefully, “I think it got her.”

“It got her,” Regina says from behind them, sounding irritable. “And it worked.”

“But she’s not...” He gestures at the pair in front of them. They’re walking some distance apart, still squabbling about something. Emma shows absolutely no signs of wanting to throw herself at the pirate, and Hook doesn’t seem to be gloating any more than usual.

Snow laughs softly. “David, I think she’s just used to it.”

David frowns at her. And it occurs to him that he might have this backwards. If it _did _get her, and Hook _was_ the first person she saw, and it _did_ work... Even magic can’t create something if it’s already there. Emma wouldn’t notice any effect if she was already feeling whatever the potion was supposed to cause.

And_ that_ means...

He looks back up at his daughter, who is just tossing an exasperated look at the pirate. It doesn’t look anything like love, or attraction, or burgeoning feelings of any kind. Then again, he supposes, neither does catching someone in a net, or hitting them over the head with a rock.

“Oh,” he says. “Damn.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Just glad that love potion didn’t work,” Emma mutters. That would be all she needs, extra attraction to Killian Jones while she’s dealing with flying monkeys.

“Mhmm,” Regina says, a sly smile hovering on her face. “You remember the laws of magic, Miss Swan?”

Emma frowns at her. “Uh… yes?” She’s a little shaky on the details, if she’s honest. She’s never been very good at book learning, and the laws of magic aren’t much more interesting than the laws of physics, which she doesn’t remember at all.

From the look on Regina’s face, she knows exactly how little Emma remembers. “Specifically, the prompting of emotions and the factors that encourage or prevent it?”

“Yeah…?” Something about not being able to create real love, she remembers that. Love potions just create attraction, or lust. And they don’t work if… Emma’s heart gives a sort of lurch. They don’t work if the target already feels the emotion.

The potion worked. The reason why she hasn’t noticed anything is because she’s already feeling it.

She feels her cheeks growing warm.

Hook, of course, picks that moment to decide to pay attention. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Emma snaps.

“I’m just reminding Emma how all of this stuff _works_,” Regina says, looking like she’s enjoying herself far too much.

“Yeah, okay, thank you, we don’t need a lesson in magic right now, it was boring enough the first time.” Emma looks around for an escape. Something else to focus on. Why, oh why, can’t the damnable monkeys attack them _now_?

Hook is looking from her to Regina and back again. And Emma realises that both of her parents are watching the exchange with expressions that say that they’re both holding themselves back from saying something.

Which means that they know.

Damn it all.

“You all right there, Swan?” Hook asks, and the concern in his voice is the worst. He’s not supposed to be concerned. It’s a lot easier when he’s teasing her, or making stupid comments. She can’t get annoyed at _concerned_.

At least he doesn’t know. He’d be insufferable if he knew.

“I’m fine,” she says, trying not to snap the words.

"Only you’ve gone rather red.”

Okay, so he’s insufferable anyway.

“Shut up.”

“I like it. It suits you.”

“Shut _up_.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (all right so here's a third part but this really is the last one, I promise. Set a little later, around the beginning of 4a.)

Emma looks around Regina’s vault, trepidation slowing her steps as she walks inside. She’s never liked the place. It’s creepy, and being here usually means getting snarked at by Regina.

She’s in better company today, but Regina’s absence is serving to make her more nervous. This is a test. A chance to prove that she can handle magic and everything about it, thank you very much. She’s determined not to touch anything, or break anything, or emerge from here covered in boils or turned into a frog.

She’s going to find a spell to ward off ice monsters, she’s going to collect any ingredients they might need, and she’s going to leave.

“Okay,” she says, keeping her voice low. “Let’s have a look.”

“Cosy, isn’t it?” Killian says, blue eyes sweeping around the vault as he comes up beside her. “I do wonder, is there some rule against electric light in your secret lair?”

Emma snorts, feeling her mood lift. Yeah, Killian and his irreverence are definitely better companions than Regina and her pointed comments. “I don’t think so. Batman has it.”

“Who’s that?”

“Uh, he’s a—he’s from Henry’s comics,” she says, opting for the easiest explanation. Henry introduced Killian to comics the other day, while she tried very hard to ignore the swell in her chest at the sight of them, Henry chattering away excitedly while Killian tried valiantly to pretend he wasn’t completely confused. “Never mind. You’ve got a point about the light. Uh, we’re looking for a book with a black cover, with silver runes on it.”

She finds it almost at once, sitting on one of the shelves between ‘Codex of Enchantment’ and a book whose title is written in wicked-looking hooked letters that she’s glad she can’t read.

Killian picks up one of the many bottles that line the shelves in Regina’s vault. “What’s this?”

Emma glances at it. “Love potion, from the looks of it. Do not drop that, whatever you do.”

“Ah, no need to worry,” he says cheerfully, shaking it a little and peering at it. “They’re hardly her specialty.”

“What?” Emma frowns over at him. Regina is good at potions. Scarily so, now that Emma knows what’s involved in making the damn things. “Yes, they are.”

He frowns back. “The one you got hit with had no effect whatsoever, as I recall.”

“What are you—” She cuts off as she remembers—the potion, and the ensuing embarrassment, and the relief that at least he didn’t know. “Oh. Right.”

His eyes narrow, and he puts the bottle down in favour of focusing completely on her. “Swan... what’s that look on your face? And—”

“Nothing—”

“—don’t say nothing,” he finishes, taking one, two swaggering steps towards her. “What?”

She makes a face, habit warring with newer circumstances. They haven’t technically been on more than one date yet, but they are dating. She held his hand on the walk over here. Kissing him is a question of _when_, not _if_, and the answer is _as often as possible_. Denying that she’s attracted to him would be ridiculous, at this point.

“It worked, okay?” she says, giving in. “The potion worked.”

That gives him pause, frowning down at her. “But you didn’t—well, I know ‘love’ is something of a misnomer, but you didn’t act like—you didn’t act any differently.”

Emma sighs. There’ll be no living with him after this. “That’s because it didn’t really change anything.”

It takes him a remarkably short time to get it. The frown vanishes, to be replaced by the exact grin she expected, wide and delighted and devious. “I knew it.”

She swats at his arm. “No, you didn’t. If you had, you wouldn’t have thought it didn’t work.”

“I thought that because I was under the impression that it would elevate any such feelings,” Killian says with a shrug.

“Those exist too.” Emma has learned a little more about potions over the past few weeks, if only to stop Regina looking so superior all the time. “There are different ones. The one I got just... it’s just meant to make you attracted to someone.”

He’s still grinning. “And since you already were, it did nothing?”

“It did something,” Emma admits. “I just—I was used to it. That feeling. So I didn’t really notice, I just kept... acting the way I always acted.”

Killian looks like Christmas has come early. She wants to be mad at him, but well, it’s the truth, and besides... it’s not like _he’s_ ever denied being attracted to _her_. “Picking fights with me, as I recall.”

“I didn’t _have_ to pick them, as I recall.”

One eyebrow rises. “You’re picking one right now.”

“You provoked it,” she shoots back.

He laughs, and so does she, trying to reign in her emotions. They seem to be trying to burst out of her chest.

“Fair point. Back to the issue at hand, though—you’re saying you were so used to fancying me that the potion made no difference to how you felt.”

She shakes her head at him, but she can’t quite banish the smile from her face. “This isn’t good for your ego, is it.”

“You’re usually hell on that, love, think of this as rebalancing the scales a little.”

“Uh-huh.” He kind of has a point, not that she’s going to admit that. She’s been kind of hard on him—and he deserved it. Kind of. She goes on anyway. “But yeah, that’s basically it. And it’s a good thing, really, I mean, if I hadn’t—if it was—maybe I’d have thrown myself at you or something.”

He raises one eyebrow. “I like the sound of that. Couldn’t you do that anyway?”

She shoots him a wry look.

He spreads his arms, eyes sparking at her. “I’ll catch you.”

There’s a moment where she hesitates. They have a spell to find. She can just brush it aside as another joke.

Or she can do what she’s wanted to do for the past hour, ever since they left the loft.

She doesn’t throw herself at him. She just steps forward, and loops her arms around his neck, and pulls him down for a kiss.

True to his word, his arms go around her at once—catching her. Holding her like she’s precious, like she matters, like he doesn’t want to let go. She leans into him, trusting him to hold them up, and he deepens the kiss. Slow, and thorough, his whole being focused on her.

She should admit things to him more often.

They drift apart sooner than she’d like. They always do.

“We’d better stop,” he says against her lips, swaying into her. “Regina will have our heads if we get carried away in here.”

She doesn’t want to stop. She wants to get carried away. But she had a plan when she came here, and she’s got something to prove, and kissing Killian for longer is a sure-fire way to forget about all the bottles and things lining the shelves and break something important and get herself turned into a frog.

So she nods, and lets him go, and turns her attention back to the spell book.

It takes her a while to find the right spell, and it takes four attempts to read it. Her attention keeps wandering.

She admits _that_ to him later, when they’re alone and have more than a minute.

He’s predictably smug about it. But, considering everything else he does after that... it’s more than worth it.


End file.
